Maybe Chris McDaniel should have run in Alabama

Maybe Chris McDaniel should have moved to Alabama to run for the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran

McDaniel lost his bid Tuesday to unseat six-term U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican Party runoff for the GOP nomination for the Senate.It was a nail-biter. With 99.8 percent of the vote counted, Cochran was leading McDaniel by 189,355 votes, or 50.9 percent, to 182,756, or 49.1 percent for McDanielCochran's narrow victory over the 41-year-old McDaniel – made possible in part by a surge of voters in mostly black Democratic precincts who turned out to vote for Cochran -- represented a victory for establishment party politics over a Tea Party-backed candidate who had pushed the 76-year-old Cochran into the fight of his long political career.Maybe the outcome for McDaniel might have been different in Alabama. At least that is the indication of a poll of Al.com readers I posted Tuesday.

Chris McDeniel

In the poll I asked readers to pretend to be Mississippians and tell me who they would vote for in the race between Cochran and McDaniel.At last check, results of the poll showed McDaniel beating Cochran handedly. McDaniel had 57.7 of the vote to Cochran's 39.2 percent. Some 3 percent were undecided.Of course the poll is not a scientific measurement of what results might have been. But for political junkies like me (and admit it, some of you) it was fun.And more "fun" could be had in Mississippi from the runoff depending on what McDaniel might do next.An angry McDaniel told supporters Tuesday night this:"There is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that's decided by liberal Democrats," McDaniel told supporters.Mississippi election law allows anyone to vote in a party's runoff provided they did not cast a ballot for the opposite party in the primary election.McDaniel did not say if he planned to challenge Tuesday's vote or whether he might wage a write-in campaign in the November general election.